An Open Offer to Ben Howe's Defenders

Ben Howe took to the digital pages of BuzzFeed Politics Tuesday to isolate and savage a project he (wrongly, as it turned out) believed was a work-in-progress for a feature film a Tea Party group was hoping to raise money for. [ADDED] The piece opens with this editorial note: “The latest Tea Party-inspired project isn’t even finished…”

Today, in response to my piece, many are taking to Twitter to defend Howe by saying that what he did is healthy for the art — a good thing, the only way our art will improve.

What a wonderful idea.

And to help your art, I would like to offer an open invitation to do the exact same thing to you that Howe believed he was doing to Tea Party Patriots:

Please submit to me an early draft of anything you are working on — be it a short video, novel, short story, blog post, feature film, song… whatever. And what I will do is summon 1500 words to “review” it at BuzzFeed Politics — or any other media outlet willing to twist it into an attack on the entire movement.

Bonus points if you are trying to raise money for the project!

While I am surprised to learn that so many would have approved of Howe targeting them like he did Tea Party Patriots, that doesn’t mean it is too late to have your art “helped” in the exact same way.